for families and children, and enjoy seasonal explorations of the salt marsh, bird walks, and open houses at the Baruch Marine Lab. The Field Laboratory campus includes a large building for research and education activities, two seawater buildings, outdoor mesocosms, boardwalks, piers, a maintenance shop, and boat sheds.
The mission of the Baruch Institute is to provide a better understanding of marine and coastal resources to improve the well-being of people, animals, and the surrounding environment.
The People Dennis Allen, Ph. D., did his undergraduate work at Hobart College in Geneva, New York, and earned his master’ s and doctorate degrees at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He and his colleagues have been sampling plankton in the salt marsh creeks of the North Inlet every two weeks since the early’ 80s.
On the day we visited, Senior Research Resource Specialist Paul Kenny, originally from Tramore, County Waterford, Ireland, who has been conducting studies with Allen for almost 35 years, was also onboard the boat from which they dropped specially made nets to obtain samples. The nets were of two different weaves— one especially small in size admitted only the smallest of creatures and plants; the second type of net with a slightly more open weave captured larger organisms.
Each sample teemed with life, some barely visible and some eye-catching like the tiny, flashing silver-eyed fish that darted about. Allen and Kenny carefully recorded data about each sample to add to their findings compiled over the last threeand-a-half decades. Their studies are an integral part of the research about plankton that is taking place around the globe. Scientists are viewing the state of the various organisms in our
waters with growing concern. They focus on the undeniable connections between these organisms and the air we breathe.
The Purpose According to Dennis Allen, the purpose of long-term ecological research at the Institute is“ to characterize changes in the abundance, distribution, and population dynamics( reproduction growth rates, behavior) of more than 100 key species of estuarine animals and understand the factors that drive those changes.
With evidence that observed changes in animal populations and habitat are related to increases in water temperature, sea level, and rainfall patterns, our research results from this relatively pristine coastal system indicate impacts of changing climate.”
During the afternoon hours, Allen and Kenny will return to the Inlet to collect data on some of the fish, shrimps, and crabs that inhabit its waters. They are easy-going, soft-spoken men, focused on the data they are gathering. Each sample is entered carefully into a small, well-worn spiral notebook and then entered into a computer database.
They have been sampling for over three decades and know their“ office”— the vast acres of the Hobcaw Barony and the tidal creeks of North Inlet— intimately. They preserve their samples studiously, but their work is punctuated by pauses to watch a bald eagle soar overhead or to enjoy a flock of white ibis that passes over the distant marsh.
They recognize their constituents— the pod of dolphins that moves through the waters, every bird that lingers, each type of grass in the marshes. They operate far from the bustle that is Georgetown, moving slowly through the waters, knowing from experience how the area has changed over the years. NK
10 Naturally Kiawah